We bought the worst Apple product

[@macaddress]

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[@arnandegans]

Just throw in a SSD for some extra speed. But yes, $800-900 for a 4 year old 2nd-hand computer is dumb... Still, if that's what you want, just replace the drive and max out the memory.

[@soyanchd5439]

Call out the WhatsApp scam in the comment section

[@cpyt]

I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY! I HATE GRAMARLY!

[@PersonHuman456]

Hey horst if you see this i wanna know if i could contact you via email or any non social media

[@radiobrojo]

Tip: Look for these offline. Many university comms/ed departments and creative firms that bought these for interns have been so angry with their performance that they recycle or fire sale them on the regular ( free to well under $500). Just buy an external SSD like a Samsung T5 and boot macOS off it, and it runs just fine.

[@ghomerhust]

for only a few dollars more, get the screen glue kit and a wheel tool to pop the screen out, and install the ssd directly inside. just load it with the OS before hand, and install it. a good time to toss in a little extra ram too

[@nicl83]

@@ghomerhust on these modern Macs you don’t even have to load the OS before you install the SSD, just hold R/command-R on boot and it’ll download it from the internet for you

[@kfj6709]

Even in academia there are dumb sheep who buy products without knowing the specs? What's the IT dept or procurement and purchasing dept doing?

[@thejpkotor]

A lot of times big IT places will net boot or use them as thin clients; in these cases the onboard drive and speed don’t matter at all.

[@Validole]

@@kfj6709 IT and tech are using windows or linux, and don't know for sure how the specs match up to usability on MacOS, outside synthetic payloads. If the input to them is "we need macs, doesn't matter which, as many and as cheap as possible", then they get macs, as many and cheap as possible. GIGO.

[@MisterBloodBunny]

I'd say it's still a nice deal, since you got a stand for free.

[@BramBiegstraaten]

If you see it from the stands point of view it got a free computer, mouse and keyboard attached to him.

[@varszegimarcell]

You’ve got a computer for a price of a stand xD

[@krishnamanchundiya]

Omg😂😂😂😂

[@blackhatson13]

Exactly! Will definitely pick this any day over the $999 stand, such a bargain!

[@krishnamanchundiya]

@@blackhatson13 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@DistrosProjects]

Fun fact: the hard drives in these iMacs are slower than the drives that were shipped in 2003-2012. There's absolutely no reason why they can't ship a 7200 rpm drive in them.

[@vamwolf]

Sata 1 port .like PS3 and 4 .

[@robertt9342]

@@vamwolf . Those consoles have Sata 2.

[@wellzi2546]

I think those macs used a 3.5" drive, not a 2.5". The entire chassis of an iMac changed in 2012. I still agree with your sentiment though.

[@DistrosProjects]

@@wellzi2546 7200RPM drives exist in 2.5 inch sizes, although they are likely slightly slower and more expensive.

[@arjunyg4655]

Throwback to when you could get 10k or 15k RPM SAS drives in Macs. Kinda want to buy one now just for the experience. Never could afford them when they were relevant lol.

[@DavidMalcolm]

I"m so glad that Apple has taken hard drives completely out of their line up. Way too many well-meaning customers bought the entry-level iMac and ended up very frustrated with how slow the drive makes the computer. I honestly wish they would have just had 128 gig SSDs and then allowed people to get external HDDs it would have been much easier on everyone.

[@DistrosProjects]

Even the Fusion drives are way faster in my experience. I used them for several months at my school with sub-30 second boot times and reasonable speed.

[@MementoMori-xx5qo]

The amount of money I've made upgrading peoples iMacs to SSDs. Thank you Apple lol.

[@the_wiki9408]

Would be nice if we could add a HDD as a second drive, though, especially in the iMac and Mini. SSD is great and all, but I'd rather not spend $800 for a 2TB SSD to store my photos and videos on, when a HDD will do just fine. Internal HDD beats external storage.

[@rmendez011]

@@DistrosProjects Thats because a "fusion drive" is 2 separate drives, the NVMe for boot, and the HDD for applications. According to Wikipedia, the 2017 iMac with the 1TB Fusion drive comes with a 32GB NVMe SSD, 2TB and 3TB fusion drives come with a 128GB NVMe SSD. Search Google for "fusion drive" and click on the Wikipedia link, it shows what years came with what space.

[@mgzukows]

@@the_wiki9408 Are you buying the SSD from apple? Where the hell would a 2TB SSD cost $800 at current pricing. Maybe in 2015. I guess you can be thinking with install cost to switch it out. But even that would not be $800

[@InsightCheck]

I worked at the Genius Bar for over 5 years and these things were the bane of my existence. I felt so bad for anyone that bought it. It was genuinely offensive that they sold these things into 2020. Anyway, the reason there are so many iMac Pro and these iMacs on the refurbished store is that when all the stores closed due to the pandemic, the vast majority of the staff converted to work from home and were given these. Initially my we got 27 inch iMacs, but then they ran out. So they started giving iMac Pro. Then they finally had to give these once they ran out of all the others. It’s also why they’re in good shape all things considered. They were used by one Apple employee for a few months.

[@tgvinfinite2607]

they gave you imac pros? that's crazy

[@gorfmaster1]

"Apple doesn't believe in depreciation" no truer words have been spoken. Even their old iPads that don't get updates are still absurdly expensive.

[@dangelo2728]

That’s certainly been true with the iPad Mini for a long time, but with the new refresh, they seem like they’re gonna refresh it on a regular basis at this point. Even the base level iPad is refreshed annually.

[@KeiAngelus]

They believe in depreciation if you do a trade in with them!

[@chrishbeatboxing2291]

Yet on the software side they deprecate everything (I’m talking about OpenGL)

[@_sparrowhawk]

If by old iPads you mean, older than 5 years... If you were going to rip Apple for anything this is not it. Apple hardware gets software support for years and years and years.

[@larrythehedgehog]

@@_sparrowhawk hey genius. They’re talking about how apple devices don’t lose value over time. Not how apple products get support for a long time. Two different concepts.

[@TurntableTV]

I’m both a PC and Apple user and I have to say that this channel is one of the best. I love that they also address (pun intended) the bad/cons in Apple products. Happy subscriber here.

[@biotechben]

Completely agree, too many Apple/Mac channels treat the product as worth it weight in myrrh, and that if you disagree that you just need to bask in your wrongness. Love that Jonathan is objective and able to provide that viewpoint and be an apple user without being fanatic. I personally dislike apple products, mostly because of how apple treats their customers or can belittle people who disagree, but Jonathan sometimes makes me go "you have a point there, that thing is actually a good thing"

[@_sparrowhawk]

@@biotechben "I personally dislike apple products, mostly because of how apple treats their customers or can belittle people who disagree" What the hell is this sentence? You dislike the prices? The design? The leadership team? The lack of games? (Of course it's the lack of games) What the ever loving fuck is this reason you gave?

[@nijigaharaTV]

@@_sparrowhawk You are literally the people he's complaining about. The worst kind of people: Company Fanboys

[@Some-guy-on-the-internet]

It's clear to me that modern versions of macOS aren't designed to run on HDDs. I sold a 2012 Mac mini a while back and added an SSD to it because Catalina took over 6 minutes to boot and several more to "warm up" after logging in on the old 5400rpm HDD it came with. Booting off the SSD took only about 5-10 seconds. It's no wonder why not a single modern Mac has HDDs as an option. macOS is literally unusable on anything but an SSD.

[@OtterBoiMilo]

How did you get the ssd going? I have a 21.5 2014 model, but with an ssd replacement, it's extremely slow. I understand that you need to enable trim, but I couldn't get it to work

[@myrealusername2193]

Really? Monterey takes ~1-2 minutes to boot up and “warm up”, and open up all of the previous apps. Using an m.2 NVME SSD

[@PvtAnonymous]

the keyword here is APFS. It's literally designed to run well on SSDs. Hence newer versions of macOS use APFS by default and run much better that way.

[@Fay7666]

It's also a simiar story on Windows land. I ran Win10 RTM on a hard drive just fine, and also ran it on an old PC with HDD & only 2GB of RAM just fine for a month or so. But I tried it last year, and it was _pain_ even on a new system with an enterprise 14TB hard drive, no debloat script saved it.

[@ej_tech]

Microsoft made a big deal about requiring TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot to run Windows 11 (officially) but never made it a requirement to have an SSD (or even eMMC flash) boot drive. Windows 10 is already *just* tolerable on a mechanical drive, but with Windows 11 it's unresponsive more than half the time.

[@Crasher_7]

“You might think that this 890 dollars iMac is a great deal, but I don’t think it is. Which is why bought it” Lol

[@halvardlundnorway]

Best reasoning ever.

[@alphaquasar3089]

Came down here for this lol

[@TR-qf2gt]

They bought it so we dont have to hahaha salute to the dedication

[@x_ktrs]

@@TR-qf2gt no shit sherlok :/

[@EricLS]

I bought a mid-tier iMac in 2014, and said “naaaahhh” on the fusion drive, despite technically understanding the underpinnings. What I had not realized is that OSX all but presumed an SSD at that point and was absolutely unbelievably slow. Worst tech mistake of my life.

[@Starach]

Same here, looking forward to a M1/2 27” when it comes out.

[@EricLS]

@@Starach have an M1 13”, it’s literally hard to believe how fast it is

[@Elloqus]

My company had gotten me an iMac 27" 2019, upgraded one, with 8-core i7 and 16GB of RAM if memory serves (pun intended), but it had a Fusion Drive. Due to the corporate nature of the device, and the large number of logins and software booting at startup, the device booted as if it had a hard drive (since the SSD part of a Fusion Drive is just 32GB, which is barely enough for the base MacOS). In general very poor experience, I couldn't believe how Apple is ok with someone spending over $3k for a professional device and getting such poor performance.

[@Handl3sAreStupid]

When I worked for Applecare, someone called with one of these asking why her brand new computer was so slow. I recommended she return the computer and get one with an SSD.

[@rec0n97]

Until a few weeks ago, I used to have this computer at my workplace. I’m a graphic designer that usually has 3-4 adobe apps open at all times, plus Spotify and safari. This computer was the worst thing I’ve ever used, don’t know why the still sell this (even as refurbished)

[@5urg3x]

6:48 Do *NOT* sell the ram it comes with. If you ever do need a warranty claim, they will deny it, if the original OEM ram has been swapped out for 3rd party RAM.

[@zoruaboy]

Idk where you’re from but for users in the US, we have a law where it’s illegal to void a warranty for broken warranty stickers or modifications to the hardware Apple would have to prove that your modification is what’s causing the issue.

[@5urg3x]

@@zoruaboy This is Apple we’re talking about here. You know that right? This is the company that told CBC that it would cost over $1000 to fix their MacBook Pro when all it needed was a new internal DisplayPort cable, or the pins unbent on the current cable, which could’ve been repaired in five minutes. They’ll use any excuse to sell you a new machine. And what are you going to do if they try to pull something? Hire a lawyer?

[@Gosu9765]

That table was so wobbly it was actually distracting :) Never understood how the same company that pushed SSD only laptops was selling macs with spinning rust in them. It always bothered me they actually sell those. Cost cutting in worst place possible.

[@brianmiller1077]

It was for the K-12 market where they're basically always on.

[@Clarkzer0]

@@brianmiller1077 Having slow computers at school made me and my family purchase my own to bring in or use at home, three times until I was finished k-highschool, just because it's "for kids" doesn't mean it should be useless, and if we want them to have the tools necessary to succeed, we should actually be doing the opposite.

[@meair]

@@brianmiller1077 we had two of these in the GT room in my freshman year, easily the slowest computers. somehow the windows machines were faster

[@wta1518]

@@meair what do you mean "somehow"? MacOS takes forever to boot from an HDD, Windows has always taken slightly less than forever.

[@markerichannelly]

Worst part about it by far is the mechanical HDD. Crack it open and put in an SSD, or even put MacOS on an external USB or TB3 drive and it becomes so much more usable 🤷‍♂️

[@FungleFunTime]

Crack is an an apt word here. That adhesive is so much fun!

[@JeanSamyr]

@@FungleFunTime i hate how this adhesive glues to the frame, man, I spend more time cleaning the adhesive residue than servicing the machine.

[@groszak1]

No so usable anymore onece you write too much because SSD can't handle too many writes.

[@benadamsondxb]

@@groszak1 Get Sensei from Cindori, it's a useful app and includes an Apple-certified TRIM enabler for your external SSD. Helps keep it healthy for much longer.

[@angerylandbarge4352]

How the hell does a computer from 2017 boot slower than a base model iMac G3 slot loader and still have a value in 3 digits?

[@the2323guy]

software inefficiency

[@prplwzrd1720]

@@the2323guy it’s the same reason why the iPad Air gen 2 lasted as long as it did

[@Toma-621]

My school used these for our photography/photoshop class. Used it to get my adobe certification and I didn’t notice any issues for intensive photo manipulation. Of course the personal computer I had at the time was a lot worse so anything was much better

[@lucasloud]

LTT: See, we’re not biased against Apple, we created Mac Address! Mac Address: “We bought the WORST Apple product!”

[@MK73DS]

0:24 Well, that's all of their products isn't it? ... Hey, don't hit me, I'm just kidding, I have an Apple device... I own a sister who owns an iPhone!

[@alter-ego-]

It's crazy!! I tried to buy an iPhone 11 Pro last month (wanted a decent 5.8" phone) and it still costs almost the same price as when it was released!!!

[@JohnAdams-qc2ju]

@PERLINNOISE Not when it is the same price as a 13 Pro. Often you can get it for $100 off but that is SOMETIMES. Unless you prefer buying 2 year old tech at the same price vs brand new stuff??

[@tomwatts1692]

I went from an iPhone 11 Pro to and iPhone 13 (normal) and it's a massive improvement. Same physical size too

[@jessemanex]

You could get an entry level gaming laptop for less than you would pay for that slow iMac.

[@personwhohasnoname]

I think I have an historic example of an amazing buy from the refurb store. In 2008 I bought a refurbished gen 1 iPod touch, which was used for work purposes so was able to claim it as a tax deduction. That iPod was used for 18 months for app testing, then "retired" to be used as a bedroom music player. It has been used almost every night and is still going strong.

[@GalahadFranco]

5:32 "Now, to confirm my hypothesis..." Jonathan, you used hypothesis instead of theory. Thank you!!!

[@taylor1038]

My old job bought one of the 5k iMacs with a 1TB HDD. They had this idea that just buying a new iMac meant it would be fast and didn't believe me when I complained of how unbearably slow it was. A big thing driving me out of that job was the glacially slow iMac for just doing simple things like opening Excel.

[@djsnowpdx]

60-80 megabytes per second would be great. These drives run ideally at 60-80 megabits per second in the best case scenario, sequential reads. That’s 1/8 the speed of 60-80 megabytes per second, and it gets worse. In random data access, SSDs are 100+ times quicker to retrieve small bits of data, such as what is required to boot the machine and launch a program. In random data reads, though it is a flawed metric, you can expect hard drives to operate in the range of 1-2 megabits per second, and access latency doing one thing can be a couple of seconds. Access latency doing several things at once can be 30 seconds or more. Disgusting. You’d literally be better off installing the operating system to an SD card and putting it in the slot on the back.

[@ElNeroDiablo]

Ehhh, presuming that's SATA III (6.0gbps, or 6000mbps) in question, that's a max theoretical throughput of 600MB/sec (using 8/10 encoding, 2 bits of parity for every 8 bits of data meaning 10b of throughput = 1B actually sent), and even high-end SATA SSD's have problems cracking the 550MB/sec mark. So 60-80MB/sec isn't too far-fetched for old spinning rust at 5400RPM made to go in a laptop, to cap out at. Now if we were talking PATA/IDE 5400RPM hard drives, they're even WORSE, as the IDE bus for drives capped out at 133MB/sec (just below the theoretical max throughput of 150MB/sec on a SATA I 1.5gbps/1500mbps bus) and the spinning rust couldn't fully saturate THAT at the time!

[@andyrharris]

I have this computer at work and I barely ever use it cos it's so bad. I know they would never pay to replace or improve it, so I have actually bought a SD card which I plan to put the OS on.

[@djsnowpdx]

@@andyrharris That’s what SSD enclosures are for. Why pay for the storage in an SD card when a real SSD is so much faster again? Running an OS from an SD card is rough. You’re right - it’s better than a hard drive, but again, an external SSD in an enclosure is a way better choice for that application, and would be a similar price per GB.

[@djsnowpdx]

@@ElNeroDiablo You’re right. It was I, not Jonathan, who had megabits and megabytes confused. But the bigger point I’m trying to make is that hard drives perform way worse than 60-80 MB/s most of the time - SSDs excel in access latency. I’m sure you know that, but for anyone else reading who wonders why SSDs are touted as being so much quicker when they don’t look that much faster, looking at sequential performance alone.

[@cobaltretrotech]

I put a two and a half inch SATA SSD in my 2012 Mac Mini and it's boot time went from 5 minutes to 30 seconds. It's crazy how slow mechanical drives were and that we put up with them for so long

[@DeviciWasTaken]

What is that 1080p screen for 170 bucks??? You can get 1440p ones for 60 bucks!

[@saturnuria1217]

My Dad has one of these. It wasn’t a bad computer when he bought it but a few years ago it got dog slow. Probably the slowest computer I’d ever used. So I wiped it and it was all fine. Long story short, whenever the file system gets switched to APFS, the system slows to a crawl. I ended up cracking it open and replacing the Hard Drive with a cheap Crucial SSD. It was like a brand new computer again. After a lot of testing I was able to pretty much confirm that the combination of APFS and a spinning hard drive is the problem. I can’t explain it in any more detail but, as long as you avoid that combination, it’s a perfectly serviceable computer for email, web, office, etc.

[@sekazi]

My current 2015 model 15" MacBook Pro came from the Apple Refurbished store. What I like about the store is that the items look brand new. Zero scratches or anything. I am still using that same MacBook today and it still performs extremely well.

[@saturnuria1217]

Just to repeat, the problem is APFS. An iMac with a hard drive will never be fast but, for some reason, combining an HDD with APFS is an absolute killer. Run the same HDD on HFS+ and it’s much, much more responsive. See my other comment for how I discovered this.

[@sarahparrish7206]

Of all the LMG channels, I love the production quality of this one the most. (This is not just because I'm an Apple fan, which I may be). I especially love the videos set outside, like the iPad one or the airtag one. Most creative imo

[@AndyofCT]

my biggest fuck up was getting a 2017 27" iMac with the fusion drive. It's basically been relegated to a $1800 Netflix box since I picked up an M1 Pro MBP... but even 5 years later, that screen is still so pretty...

[@theolms8915]

Trust me, this is not the worst Apple product. The worst Apple product is the 2016 15” MacBook Pro or the iPhone 7.

[@DetroitTintStudio]

I spent $1600ish on a 24inch iMac years ago (right before they launched the 27” iMac). I was so happy when I got it. Then later on I realized it’s horrible for gaming, couldn’t upgrade hardly anything but the ram. Can’t use it as an external display. It’s just a paper weight now, but it’s too pretty for me to just throw away.

[@artemis4575]

you can stream cooking tutorials on it

[@humanwaveform]

Linux time

[@rochitgurung9090]

Football manager runs smoothly so I don’t need to upgrade anything

[@MassiveDerek]

Costco is selling this for $599 with an SSD right now.

[@gsblendzz]

i bought one of these and couldnt stand the slowness so i used more money and bought an m1 iMac

[@hukmai]

Funnily enough, at my local Costco the 21.5 inch imac with the 4k display and 8th gen i3-8100 ( 4c/4t) is 889$ while the one youre reviewing is (7th gen dual core hyper thread i5) is 600$ is good ole USA

[@theaterlightman89]

My first mac was a refurbed core 2 duo macbook from 2007... it's still running today... not as my daily driver though

[@theaterlightman89]

The biggest problem that computer had was a 32mb shared video memory

[@brianmiller1077]

Many years ago, I ordered an i5 8 GB 2013 iMac from the refurb store and I got an i7 16 GB ram instead. I still use it everyday, but I really want the next iMac variant (even the low end M1 Pro will do). hopefully they will announce it at the March event.

[@JeanSamyr]

On my College they had a lot of these iMacs, I remember to use verbose mode to delete the config file to create a new administrator user account to install anything that I like, and to bring a external SSD to run Win10 sometimes..

[@wescrowther655]

I’m still running an iMac from late 09, 27” 2k screen, 32gb ram, 3.3ghz i7, Radeon 6970 2gb vid card, 2tb hybrid drive. Yes, I upgraded out of warranty with many creative parts. A lot of them. Still runs like a champ.

[@hazqier]

0:02 What music is that? It’s so relaxing and nice that I just want to fall asleep while listening to it.

[@JhonnyBomby]

Oh so great I just realized that my computer is a laptop with a big screen

[@Maximara]

This is why you boot from an external SSD with any Mac with an internal platter drive. It is insanely slow to boot up. I got in the habit of booting from external drives as I went cheap and the internal HD were _slow_ .

[@joshiepooh]

You could get a baseline M1 Mini from Costco for $670 and have a 90 day return policy.

[@YouAreBreathing]

My oldest laptop that's currently working in my posession is an 11 year old Lenovo Thinkpad laptop, and I upgraded the spinning hard drive to an SSD. I only have hard drives for storage on my desktop computer, but I'm thinking of replacing them with SSDs, so the only spinning things in my desktop computer would be the fans on the CPU cooler, case fans, and video card fans.

[@jenibond]

There was trash can ! On apples Uk website !!!! ON the 3 Nov 2021 there was listed a 12 core 2.7 refurbished 6.1 mac pro still But for £5,149 (about $6,900usd) you have to be mad !!!

[@EllieSky]

An SSD upgrade was the best thing I ever did for the family 2013, 21.5 inch iMac. Sped things up 10-fold and is still used pretty much daily to this day.

[@MrTrickBrick]

That moment when you've been binging this channel again and then they upload. Great well produced content as always. 👍

[@darthvader192837465]

I've been booting my late 2012 iMac from an external SSD via USB for the last couple years as it too has a 5400 spinner inside it that I don't trust to not crap the bed without warning... And I live in fear that my Magic Mouse that runs on AA batteries will die one day and I'll have to get one with the charging port on the bottom

[@crestofhonor2349]

Why not get something non apple for the mouse? The mx master 3 is one of the best mice out there for standard use

[@PvtAnonymous]

@@crestofhonor2349 the only "magic" about the Magic Mouse, is that it will give you Carpal Tunnel Syndrome at some point...

[@KHudso]

Same here 2012 model installed an SSD, used the HDD as a time machine backup drive. This thing runs like a champ! Magic Trackpad or regular mouse is a lot better than the Magic Mouse though.

[@Muhluri]

I was also browsing the refurbished section a while ago. I don’t know why anyone would spend nearly ~$1000 on a 2015 macbook when they can get a used M1 pro

[@mxmobile5619]

Ports and the old design

[@handlemonium]

Or the fact that the used Asus ZenBook I just snagged for under $250 has an 512GB SSD *and* a faster quad-core CPU (i5-8250U).

[@dustojnikhummer]

@@handlemonium 8250U for 250 dollars? Jeez

[@handlemonium]

@@dustojnikhummer Yeah the guy ran out, but a few months ago I guess he refurbished a bunch and just wanted to get rid of em. The laptops themselves were 2017 refreshes of the same 2016 model.

[@_amrbadr_]

no apple product is worse than 1k usd stand, hell the fuckin $20 polishing cloth is more useful

[@DennisStewart]

I'm not an apple user anymore, but I really appreciate the channels "pros/cons" weigh in for usability value vs $$.

[@aelaan12]

An anecdote: I am in a Jump+ store (September 2021) where I am dropping off my 15" 2015 to have the battery replaced under the exchange program. An older lady is waiting at the counter, she is very nervous and excited because she just purchased this model. In agony I see her pay well over 1200 Canadian dollars for the unit. I made some short talk with her about the weather and how beautiful the summer had been so far. She explained that her old MacBook Pro had been so slow (2012 model) and that she was now retired and did not need to travel with a computer, this was the best solution, in her eyes. The sales associatie started shooting daggers at me, but I never told her not to buy it.

[@sriramsundar8388]

This iMac should've been discontinued all the way back in 2015 when the other 21.5 iMacs were updated to 4k resolution.

[@reganbrannigan3006]

My Mam and Dad both have an iMac from 2013 that both had hard drives. They were incredibly slow at doing any tasks and from my perspective weren’t usable. It kept on saying there wasn’t enough ram but what the problem was is that the hard drive was so incredibly slow it pretty much bricked the whole system. After a fresh ssd was installed they both now run much better, still slow, but now they’re at least usable.

[@FlyingPigChannel]

I had to use an (I think exactly) identical mac configuration for communications tech. Absolute hot garbage, took minutes to boot up applications and was just a horrible experience. Thankfully we were allowed to use our own computers, and my 2015 MacBook Pro with a new NVMe ssd absolutely creamed that thing.

[@xaddict]

I bought my iMac around 2018 and it feels exactly the same. A “fusion” drive that’s terribly slow, a startup time that reminds me of Windows XP after years of use and it only got worse. Waiting for a 2nd gen Mac Mini with M1 to finally get rid of it.

[@the_retag]

Just leave apple With almost any regular pc you can swap the drive and off you go

[@JohnAdams-qc2ju]

@@the_retag You can swap in an ssd on these. It is more annoying on an imac but spent $40 on a kit and buy a cheap $60 SSD - $100 cost.

[@xaddict]

@@the_retag who says I don’t also have a pc running for my gaming needs? I even have a raspberry pi for my Linux needs 😛 But a Mac is an amazing environment for web development and design. Their new stuff (and older stuff also) is great, it’s just this in-between line of garbage (the razor blade around the edges iMacs) they brought out that ruined iMacs for me. They were overpriced pieces of junk that Apple sold as gold.

[@benadamsondxb]

Yep. Same here with the 2019. Apple shrank the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive in 2015 or thereabouts. My 2012 iMac boots much faster than my 2019 and both have 1TB Fusion Drives. I now use a TB3 SSD as my system drive instead. Much faster.

[@sanguinesomnambulist]

@6:31 that is the most late 80s/early 90s computer I've seen that's basically new. Half as much RAM as it has Storage, and costs more than my first car.

[@dtemp132]

I helped a family friend with a Late 2015 27” iMac running macOS 12 today. It had a 1TB spinner and ran like absolute garbage. The CPU or RAM wasn’t being taxed, and I don’t believe any program was hammering the disk. Disk Utility didn’t say there were SMART issues. But loading any program took minutes.

[@faizanjoyia]

I am still using a Mac min from 2012 but I have replaced the HDD with a SSD now the computer is usable.

[@benadamsondxb]

I did that with my 2012 Mini. It made an amazing difference. My main Mac is now a 2019 iMac running off an external Thunderbolt 3 SSD and the old Mini still boots faster. Not as capable otherwise, but boy does it startup quick.

[@enjoyeverymomentvideos2687]

I got 2017 27inch with 1tb fusion drive , it was to slow ... so what I end up doing was buying an external thunderbolt drive from tekq and now it's around 1.4gb/s and it takes around 20sec to boot it :) also bought a corsair ram and now it's 48gb from base 8gb that is unusable for photoshop with A7RIV. Now I don't fell a big difference between this and my m1 macbook pro base model.

[@Jan-vw5cg]

I absolutely love this channel. As a tech enthusiast, I love how your coverage is both critical and fair.

[@heyitsevan758]

I remember working with these at my old high school. When you are replacing the ancient eMacs in the spED department with these, it doesn’t seems as bad.

[@dtronic]

Booting macOS on an external SSD and leaving the internal drive for storage is the way to go on these old iMacs. I've been doing it for years on my 2015 5k iMac. It's a great way to avoid having to take the screen off and the speed improvement is insane.

[@XionEternum]

Worst deal in the Apple Store? The $999 monitor stand. It's an overpriced paperweight that offers far less functionality than what you presented in this video.

[@EdthePlumber]

Buts it’s a good paperweight

[@benhofb]

The thing that genuinely destroys me is how Apple can sell these still and stick to their "vintage vs. obsolete" repair guidelines. Anything older than 5 years is considered "vintage" by them, and anything 7 and older is deemed "obsolete." Shouldn't they sell this as a "vintage refurbished" device then? And how long can they even guarantee any sort of Apple Care or manufacturer warranty on something like this? It's so nutty to me.

[@michaelheimbrand5424]

Important! Never ever recommend or choose the fusion drive. It´s one of Apple´s worst idea. I have repaired a billion of these. (I´m a former Apple technician). Otherwise, many good points.

[@JasonChamberlain]

where i live, they do call it the “Refurbished and Clearance” section. Which to me supports the idea that some of the Macs aren’t actually used.

[@mitchhannon]

The worst part of these machines is the awful integrated graphics trying to populate the screen. We had some designers stuck on these once, and while Photoshop or apps with rasterized images were usable, Illustrator or anything vector was the messiest most awful experience.

[@lucidnonsense942]

The crazy memory iMacs were for institutions that, like university computer labs, that load a virtual machine into memory each time a user logs in. You have a "base image" on the harddrive, then user deltas get loaded off the central server. When you log out they get written. Since the whole filesystem exists in memory, they offer a decently fast experience.

[@micahbdev]

We have a slower clocked version of this in my Graphic Design class... We get **nothing** done in that class.

[@JoshGuessWho]

“It’s not expensive”, the proceeds to show us a computer for $900. Not including taxes and shipping.

[@pbpx]

Helped a friend with their mac recently. it was slow as hell but he said it was brand new. This was the problem :(

[@KHudso]

Be a good friend and swap the HDD with an SSD. Night and day difference he will owe you big time lol

[@williamcharlesjames]

The store is actually “Refurbished and Clearance”. There is a clearance section on the page but I haven’t soon anything there in a long time. I imagine they just sell those clearance products as refurbished either to make more money (clearance usually implies a bigger sale price) or to not have the “embarrassment” of having a product in clearance to prevent the _____ was a huge flop videos from being more prominent that they already are.

[@AmmarVanKorsha]

My dad has the 4K model, and it was painfully slow. He thought it was from ram, so he got someone to upgrade it, nope! It was barely noticeably faster, but he upgraded the hard drive to an ssd and now it’s really fast!

[@fonskarssemakers]

Buys crap so we don't have to...My man!

[@cohenturley2049]

“I think it’s a bad deal, that’s why I bought it” that matches my mindset a little too well sometimes

[@Ebalosus]

TBF the education iMacs sucked back in the day too. I’ve always steered potential customers away from them.

[@theseob]

I added a external samsung t1 ssd to my 2017 imac, and it makes a world of difference. And since you can choose to boot from this device our imac is now up and running within half a minute or so. Only downfall, you loose a usb port, and have to be careful not to disconnect the drive. I printed a free to download bracket that slides onto the imac foot that holds the drive on the back.

[@mohammadhaitham5644]

I work at an apple store, we have those backstage. Believe me when i tell you those take us a SHIT ton of time to boot

[@BerserkBrownie]

"We bought the worst Apple product" me: you have any idea how little that narrows it down?

[@IAmMrFreak]

I worked as an apple support technician for a while and can verify that not only does apple treat refurbished products the same as new regarding warranty etc. but they also put refurbished products through much stricter testing than new ones, the only differences you're likely to see from a refurbished product direct from the apple store is some superficial damage (i.e scratches on the bezel).

[@ElNeroDiablo]

Apple puts refurb gear through much stricter QC before sale than their new gear?! I mean, it's great they put that fine-toothed a comb over the refurbs to weed out bung units, but the fact they put MORE work in to that than QC on new units is kinda crazy!

[@Alpha8713]

This is true of most other manufacturers, too. A "refurbished" product has almost always been tested more thoroughly by an actual human than a "new" one.

[@IAmMrFreak]

@@ElNeroDiablo Yeah but think of it this way, a new product is expected to work and therefore is tested to make sure everything is within the correct tolerances, whereas with a refurbished product you have no idea what sort of use and abuse it's had so you need to make 100% sure that the parts that are reused work as would be expected on a new product.

[@DangerousDac]

You can't put M.2 in, but you can put in a SATA SSD which will still greatly improve the speed of the system.

[@glujaz]

Fun fact, I have an old Mac mini from 2009 which I use as a server. It's still booting from a spinning drive, into Debian. Working pretty well ! 😬

[@only1gameguru]

I had someone I worked with who got a 2018 Mac with an i3 8GB of ram and the 5.4k rpm driven... You can polish things so much before you realized you polished a paper weight

[@gabemcguire2463]

It isn’t a secret that the refurbished section is also their clearance section. Their website literally has it listed as “Refurbished and Clearance”

[@weeksy79]

They sell these for people who need like-for-like replacements on weird/unique systems. Normally in those scenarios you get completely gauged, so this is a good deal

[@waffles245]

i got a 2018 ipad pro from their refurb store and felt basically new. And since it's basically the same as the 2020 pro with a GPU core disabled, i saved myself a ton of money while still getting Apple Pencil 2 support, 120Hz, and a usb c port. Shame there isn't a 3.5 mm jack tho

[@ianelsley71]

I bought one of these on an ebay auction for £280 a couple of weeks ago. Just sayin'. Oh.. and the 2007 iMac it replaced with an SSD upgrade in it boots in a third of the time. Doesn't run any modern software through.

[@franklinjeh]

Ouch, my iMac got "Worst Apple Product"... but mine has a Fusion drive and I bought it 3 years ago... so, not feeling too bad

[@mordecaiepsilon]

These videos always go way way deeper than the title would have you believe, but in the best way possible

[@0ddishPD]

My grandma bought me the iMac 21.5" i3 3.6GHz 4k 2019 1TB HDD, and it was my first mac... The same slow HDD with 5400rpm. It even had been a demo product, so the HDD had also been used. I just thought it being a demo was the reason it was slow, but later found out that the model was just crap in general. I was supposed to use it for Logic, but every time I tried to open it, it would take up to 2 minutes. Now I have bought a Macbook air M1 from my own money. Such difference!

[@SammyDumanauw]

The moment you said “hard-drive” that’s when I straight away say “GET OUTTA HERE”

[@TheGokki]

This is one of the biggest problems i have with Apple, their price positioning is terrible, and often hard to justify, say, 200€ price hike over an 8GB RAM upgrade. It's insane!

[@SuperSpruce]

This machine is very similar to my old Mac, except I had a slightly better CPU, 16GB RAM, a 4K display and decent graphics. It had a spinning hard drive like these.

[@EastsideBodega_]

That camera angle @ 02:06 can really be used as a 2010’s case study of Apple’s minimalist design aesthetic

[@Frog-ko6uu]

Not having an SSD, even a SATA one, is insane. The last OSes that ran fine on a HDD were Windows 7 and OS X Mavericks. Even a laptop from 2007 can run Windows 10 Pro 64-bit perfectly fine with a decent SSD in it.

[@MrCed122]

You know the worst thing about that computer? It was still sold BRAND NEW in 2021, it was only discontinued when the M1 iMac was released, but with a (slow) 256GB SSD. It wasn't that much better, it had the exact same CPU, GPU, RAM and screen, and it was like 400$ more. For basically the same price, you could buy a M1 Mac Mini, a 4k display and a mechanical keyboard for a MUCH better experience (and if you're not using the VESA mount on your monitor, you can find adapter to attach the Mac Mini on it to hid it) or even simply a MacBook Air and a second display.